


Unfortunate Soul

by Raine_N



Series: One Shots for Your Soul [4]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love, hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 10:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11183190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raine_N/pseuds/Raine_N
Summary: He used to be in love, then he was in love with being in love, and then...





	Unfortunate Soul

All is well. That is the only thing he could tell himself, over and over again. Even when he felt himself grow tired more easily, even if he felt his throat grow tighter with each passing day. It'll be alright, for certain, so just make it through this day, through this week, this month, this year. Please, just last the year.

★彡

Wonwoo was never good at feelings. But, as he had learnt through the years from others and experience, love was not a feeling. Love was a choice. So, if that really is true, you should be able to choose who you fall in love with. That is why all he'd ever had was an infatuation with people. He'd been infatuated with guys, girls, and even a nonbinary person. He'd had enough crushes to last him a lifetime, but he had never found someone worth loving.

He started to learn how to repress such feelings into the back of his mind, where he could simply ignore them. He learned that as long as you could ignore it without immediate repercussions, it wasn't worth worrying about.

So, when he first met Mingyu, he didn't worry about anything.

★彡

Wonwoo was probably the loneliest guy in the universe. He'd gone through high school by himself, and he'd only gotten a real friend in his first year of college. This friend was called Wen Junhui. Junhui saw him walking around on his own and invited him to lunch with him the second day of class. During that time, Wonwoo learned that Jun knew everyone, and had a close group of friends he always hung out with. Soon, Wonwoo had a group of ten unfairly attractive, and more importantly, queer people to accompany him if he needed someone.

At first, the others had been kind of wary of him, and Wonwoo didn't blame them, as he technically did intrude into their group, but there was a highschooler named Seokmin who took it upon himself to make him feel liked, and soon he felt himself getting comfortable around the others.

It had been a crazy idea for Wonwoo to have so many friends when he was still in high school, but now he was sitting in a group of ten people who genuinely found him nice, even if he had the personality of a rock and also the face of one.

★彡

At the beginning of his third year at college, Wonwoo had already had enough of the damn place. He had moved into an apartment near the building, and he'd gotten a job in the nearby bookstore. On the first day of school, he'd also gotten so lost in thought, he bumped into someone and he didn't even notice. 

The person he'd bumped into later looked for him in the halls, and Wonwoo learned that he had accidentally knocked coffee out of a stranger's hand. He apologized, and offered to take him to a nearby cafe as a better apology. The stranger accepted, and told him his name and when he'd be done today.

Kim Mingyu, first year in this college, and he'd be done after 2:00pm.

★彡

Wonwoo remembered all of this, and more. He remembered introducing Mingyu to his friends after a few more coffees in aforementioned cafe. He remembered how he'd always meet up with the boy, and Hansol and Seungcheol, after Wonwoo had found out the boy shared a passion for rap. He remembered the day he had to save the boy from Jihoon's wrath, as the taller had teased him about him height, and he remembered noticing how tall Mingyu really was. He remembered how his canine-like teeth would show if he was happy, and how he looked really good with blue hair, and really bad with orange hair. He remembered how he could make the taller boy smile with the stupidest of jokes, and how Mingyu always seemed to want to find something to complement him about, whether that was his smile or his new haircut. But for the life of him, could he not remember when he had chosen to love him.

★彡

He tried to think of when he started loving Mingyu, but he could not find anything in the depts of his mind. It was as if the choice had not been made by a conscious part of his being, but by his unconscious and seemingly innocuous part of his soul.

He'd then drift over to all of the reasons to love Kim Mingyu. He'd even written them all down once, and then his anxious mind proceeded to shoot him down and tell him that Mingyu would never love him back. He'd never uncover a lot of things about his problem, but he knew that that was where it started to go wrong.

★彡

Wonwoo had never started to lose real hope until one day, when he'd started to get a bad cough. It was like a tickle in the back of his throat, persistent, annoying, but not extremely harmful. He'd, at the time, just guessed that he was getting sick, even though it was the middle of July and it made absolutely no sense. He had thought nothing of it until he'd gone to the library where he'd once worked, and suddenly he'd coughed. A singular petal fell from his throat onto his hands. Had he known anything about flowers, he'd recognized a hibiscus.

★彡

Of course Wonwoo knew what that meant. It was a common myth, the illness, and there was a rumor that it only applied to soulmates, or that it was only created by the thought that the one you love did not love did not love you back, but anyway, he still knew what it was. Hanahaki disease. And he knew what it meant.

★彡

After weeks and weeks of continuously coughing up singular petals, which he all kept in a jar on his desk at home, he was out with Jun, Seungcheol, Minghao, Minghao's friend and Jeonghan's "adopted" son Chan who was the newest addition to their now thirteen-member family, and Jisoo, when he suddenly got a coughing fit. Jisoo was the one to make sure he was okay, and the only one to notice several flower petals in Wonwoo's hands before he stuffed them all in his pockets. He'd confronted the stone-faced boy about it, and however hard Wonwoo tried to deny it, the American-Korean male denied his denial.

"Hibiscus means a perfect wife in this era, but it used to mean eternal beauty, did you know?"

★彡

Wonwoo was insecure, and every time he coughed up one more petal than last time, his insecurities grew. After Jisoo found out, he felt a little better, especially when he found out Jisoo himself had recovered from the disease. It gave him hope, even though he never bothered to ask how he recovered. He recovered, and that was the most important thing in order to keep Wonwoo's head up.

It was purely by accident that Seungcheol and Junhui found out. Jisoo and Wonwoo were having a very private conversation in someone's bed slash game room, when the two walked in. After hearing the topic, they started to interrogate Jisoo first, and then Wonwoo, and there was no choice left for Wonwoo but to tell them. The two promised not to tell a soul, unless Wonwoo asked them to, and Wonwoo agreed to that.

He now had three people he could confide in, and it made him feel a bit better, though he still felt miserable about the whole situation.

★彡

It took three months for Wonwoo to start coughing up a second kind of flower. This time, it was a stereotypical red rose, meant to represent eternal love. It made Wonwoo gag a bit because of the genericness, but Jisoo told him red roses were pretty rare. 

It took three weeks of progressively coughing up more flowers and actively trying to pursuade Jisoo that the elder boy told Wonwoo what his flowers were. 

Red, Purple, White and Orange roses. And Wonwoo was also told that that was where Jisoo's extensive knowledge of flowers came from.

Wonwoo also had the guts to ask how Jisoo recovered.

"I fell in love with someone else... The red rose represents the love I still feel for him as a friend, but I got over him romantically, and fell for someone who could love me back."

★彡

Wonwoo spent most of his free time thinking of how to confess to the boy that held his heart, besides admiring said boy and spending time with his group of friends, of which said boy was a part. 

He never found a right moment to confess, because things went downhill really quickly real soon.

★彡

One day, Wonwoo awoke in a white room. He couldn't remember getting there, and he couldn't remember the last few hours, or maybe even days, all that he knew was that his throat hurt, and that his stomach felt like a bottomless pit.

He'd been awake for a few hours when a female dressed in white came inside of the room he was in. She briefly introduced herself as Nayeon before announcing she'd go get the doctor for him.

"You've gotten into a bad car accident two days ago, and some of your internal organs were pretty bruised up. We've had to replace part of your liver, but for the surgery to work you had to get enough oxygen to make sure you don't die. We noticed you had Hanahaki disease and that was affecting the flow of oxygen and I'm sorry that we hadn't asked you for your opinion, but while you were slowly dying, we couldn't bring ourselves to think of those consequences. You've been ridded of any feelings for your beloved, and thus of the disease. However, you have not lost the ability to feel, unlike what hoaxes might lead you to believe. You will however never love this person in the same way again." 

Wonwoo felt like killing himself right then and there.

★彡

After he was released from the hospital, Wonwoo holed himself up in his bedroom, only coming out to drink twice a day, urinate once a day, and eat every two days. He just felt so miserable, he had no intention of getting out of his house ever again. Jisoo had taken it upon himself to take care of the miserable man, getting groceries for him sometimes, forcing him to shower and washing his clothes and dishes. Nothing he could say could help the situation, and after a while, Jisoo gave up on trying to pursuade him.

★彡

Wonwoo started writing. Letters, lyrics to songs that didn't exist, poems and other things related.

"Friends,

All I feel is emptiness, a hole where I once could find a beating and living heart. I tried to be sad, or angry, about anything, but I can't bring myself to care for anything anymore.

Although I can never love Mingyu in the same way anymore, I am still in love with the memory of being in love with him. I can't live with the knowledge that I can never again love the person I want to love so badly."

Wonwoo had left it on his desk somewhere, and the next time Jisoo entered, he was asleep, so the other male decided to clean up a bit, when he stumbled upon that particular letter. He pocketed it and took it upon himself to inform their friend group when he was done taking care of Wonwoo for the day.

That proved later than expected and Jisoo ended up telling the guys a day later.

★彡

Mingyu immediately decided to go to Wonwoo after what Jisoo had told him, and navigated his way to the elder's house. He was let in by Jisoo, and knew the way to Wonwoo's bedroom through many visits before everything went to shit. He knocked on the bedroom door, but got no answer. Quietly, he opened the door, and that revealed Wonwoo lying in his bed like a patient from a hospital. Mingyu quietly rushed to his bedside after he noticed a haunting lack of the rise and fall of his chest, and was mortified to find out that there was neither a pulse nor any sign of air leaving or entering his body. After calling an ambulance, he tried to reanimate the body, but all of his efforts proved fruitless.

When the ambulance came and Wonwoo was declared deceased by the paramedics, Mingyu promptly started coughing. His chest heaved as he tried to get enough air between coughs, and as he coughed, he noticed more flowers than he'd ever coughed up before in his hands. He recognized the flowers.

Hibiscus, Red Rose, and a singular White Rose, all stained with the powerful but beautiful color of his own blood.

★彡

"Why couldn't you have found a different way to love him? He's as miserable as you used to be before you overdosed."

★彡

"You should have told me, I'm... no, I was your best friend. We could have solved it together."

★彡

"Maybe I should have, maybe I should have."

**Author's Note:**

> I can't seem to and don't want to write anything but angst let's go


End file.
